A Petition to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, United States House of Representatives, and all members of Congress.

Purpose: To expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and all its subsequent revisions and codifications to declare it the public policy of the United States that discrimination based on LGBT status is prohibited.

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

We the undersigned call on you and your colleagues to mark this 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and the start of the gay liberation movement by passing legislation to expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and all its subsequent revisions and codifications to declare it the public policy of the United States that discrimination based on LGBT status is prohibited.

For forty years, the LGBT movement has asserted the simple idea that LGBT rights are civil rights. For forty years we have been told to wait our turn and not to rock the boat. But with the election of 2008, we sent a clear message to Washington. Now is our time.

As Michelle Obama said on Gay Pride Day last year, "We are all only here because of those who marched and bled and died, from Selma to Stonewall, in the pursuit of a more perfect union." We stand united in that struggle and will not accept any effort to roll back the protections of the Civil Rights Act. But we must insist that they be expanded in order for the Act to truly live up to its name.

Because you represent Harvey Milk's district, the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco, the nexus of the LGBT community on the West Coast, you have a special role to play in defending and protecting the civil rights of LGBT people everywhere. We hope that you will fulfill that role by passing this legislation.

And to those who say we can't have equal rights now, we say "Yes we can!"